A tear for Jan

I'm sure you have all read the news . . . . if not go here, here and here. But then you get jerks like this guy.

Jan Ullrich retired from professional cycling. I think I shed a tear when I first read the news flash on cycling news. He was a great cyclist! You can't argue with that. He won the Tour de France and finished second 5 other times. Most of all he did things his way. When everyone was hopping on the high-cadence spinning craze to get through time trials or over mountains, he was still pumping through his big gears!

Yeah, he partied a bit too much. Getting busted for taking "e" or whatever it was certainly didn't help his position with the more elitist among the cycling crowd. Oddly, that only made me like him more. Some say he was waisting his talent. Perhaps. But life is all about balance and I've been known to enjoy a PBR after a race. He was still able to compete at the highest level and everyman needs to find their own balance in life.

Worst of all this last year just seemed to me like complete bull shit. Some jerks in Spain write a report with a few cyclists names on it. They have evidence but they don't want to use it. A year later some riders are competing some are stuck without a team contract. I beleive Jan got it much worse than Floyd in some respects. At least there was a test that came back positive with Floyd (however flawed that test maybe is a completely different blog post all together). Jan had no test. He was just covered by a cloud of suspicion. This cloud ended his career. It is a shame for cycling and I feel rather sad for Jan.

Remember the 2006 Tour de France? Remember how exciting it was? Imagine if Jan was there too? Imagine the kind of battle it could have been . . . we will never know.